Abstract

RUIZ LEDESMA, Elena Fabiola  and  CHAVARRIA BAEZ, Lorena. Sign language: an alternative to mitigate COVID-19 infections in primary school children. RIDE. Rev. Iberoam. Investig. Desarro. Educ [online]. 2023, vol.14, n.27, e570.  Epub May 06, 2024. ISSN 2007-7467.  https://doi.org/10.23913/ride.v14i27.1712.

Sign language, by allowing non-verbal communication, reduces the risk of COVID-19 infection between students/teachers within classrooms. Unfortunately, they are not familiar with its use and although there are software systems that help to learn it, its main disadvantage is that they do not evaluate whether the execution of the sign is correct or not. Therefore, the problem addressed in this work is the lack of software systems that allow, on the one hand, instructing primary school children without hearing or speech disabilities about the basic notions of Mexican Sign Language (MSL), taking into account their learning style, and, on the other hand, evaluating how well they are performing the signs they have learned. To solve it, a software system was developed, both Web and mobile application, that satisfies the two necessities, i.e., it instructs, considering the learning style, and evaluates, by recognizing the image of the sign made by the infant. The evaluation made by a group of children showed that it is feasible to use this system to support the instruction and evaluation of the signs of the alphabet and the numbers of the MSL, with which it is possible to form any word/cipher, so that this proposal constitutes an alternative to mitigate COVID-19 infections in primary school children

Keywords : Sign language; COVID-19; primary education; information system; teaching.

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